Becoming A Part Time Real Estate Agent

[John Nicolucci]

Hoping this is the correct place for this. Apologies if it is not! Hi, my name is John and I found Bigger Pockets a couple years back when I was looking to get into investment property’s. Unfortunately back then I was not as set up as I am now in my career. However, I am back on here with a different view in mind. I have a career and work in technology but have always felt like real estate offered a great path to “bigger pockets”, pun intended. I would love to own an investment property or flip houses one day but I know absolutely nothing about this kind of stuff. So I thought about becoming a real estate agent to start. My questions are to anyone who was or is a real estate agent, especiallly someone who has experience balancing a full time job with a career in real estate. How difficult is it to balance a full time job with a part time career in real estate? Is the return on commissions worth the loss in monthly and yearly fees? Did you feel like you were losing too much free time on weekends and holidays? Did you feel like you missed out on opportunities because of your full time schedule? Again, my apologies if this is the wrong place for this post, im still getting familiar with the site again, but just wanted to introduce myself and get some guidance. Thanks, John

[Cassi Justiz]

I recently became a real estate agent for a lot of the same reasons. I started investing and then decided to work the agent side into my real estate strategy. Before you decide to get your license, I would really look into the fees and time commitment that will be required of you. If you only plan to do one or two deals a year, depending local factors you may not even break even on your start up or yearly fees.  BUT if you plan to scale and work with other people, it could definitely be worth it. Yes, you will be required to give up your nights and weekends if you plan to aggressively grow your real estate business but that will be your choice. You could chose not to do that. The beauty of the real estate business is that you typically won't have a "boss" telling you that you HAVE to take on more clients.  There are a lot of clients that also work 9-5 jobs, so after hours and weekend appointments are definitely going to be a part of your life if you plan to scale.